11.30am

Open up parliament, say MPs

Public access to parliament should be increased despite the recent flour bomb attack on the prime minister, MPs said today.

The House of Commons modernisation committee said parliament must be more welcoming to the general public and not give the impression visitors were "tolerated only at sufferance".

It called for the construction of a new visitor centre and suggested students could be allowed to use the Commons chamber for debates when MPs are not sitting.

The committee also said parliament should no longer term visitors "strangers".

The committee published its report just weeks after a clampdown on access following the attack on Tony Blair by the Fathers 4 Justice group as the prime minister spoke in the Commons.

Mr Blair was hit by a purple flour bomb thrown from the Commons galleries, leading the Speaker to restrict access and launch a review of security.

A glass screen had already been put up in front of the visitors' gallery. But the perpetrators were sitting in front of the screen.

Today's report called for a reception and security building at parliament. Plans have already been drawn up for a £5m security screening building. But many MPs also want to see a visitors centre as well.

The report also called on MPs to look into opening parliament to visitors on Saturdays and to consider letting students and members of the UK Youth Parliament use the chamber when MPs are not sitting.

Other recommendations include sending a new voter's guide to all young people around the time of their eighteenth birthday and radically upgrading the parliamentary website.

One of the key demands is to drop the convention that visitors to the Commons are referred to as "strangers". The Palace of Westminster is home to the Strangers' gallery, Strangers' dining room and Strangers' bar.

It said that was the last impression that should be given to people who exercised their right to visit their parliament and whose taxes paid for everything that took place there.

The leader of the house, Peter Hain, who also chairs the committee, said: "Too often the impression is given that the Commons is a private club, run solely for the benefit of its members, where members of the public are tolerated only on sufferance.

"Getting rid of the term 'strangers' is the simplest and most obvious change. But we also need to think about the way we treat visitors when they are here. We need to make this place a little less alien and a little more welcoming to the general public."

Liberal Democrat committee member Paul Tyler called for greater use of the internet to involve voters, and particularly young people, in the workings of parliament.

He said: "It would be a dangerous delusion to think that attracting more people to tour this mock mediaeval, neo-Gothic palace is likely to improve that connection. Rightly, our report shifts the emphasis.

"I was determined that we should develop the interactive potential of electronic communication, especially to engage younger citizens in the parliamentary process.

"As the elections last week showed, the voters have some messages for us. If we do not make it possible for them to have an effective dialogue with parliament, public frustration and contempt will simply undermine democracy altogether."

Declan McHugh, director of the Hansard Society's parliament and government programme, welcomed the report as "a blueprint for making Westminster more welcoming and visitor-friendly".

But he added: "The proposals put forward by the modernisation committee are a useful starting point for making parliament more accessible to the public and for building greater awareness about the role that MPs play. But they do not amount to a solution to the problem of political disengagement. That requires a more deep-rooted change in the political culture, and one that only parliamentarians can affect.

"What people find most alienating about parliament is the overt partisanship that contaminates the majority of parliamentary exchanges, particularly in the Commons chamber. Indeed, it seems that the style, tone and behaviour of parliamentarians tend to reinforce the negative view that 'politicians are all the same', and in so doing erodes public respect for parliament and MPs."